His High Society
by megSUPERFAN
Summary: "He decided to pay a visit to his family. Perhaps it was the chill of the night, perhaps the fact that his stomach was empty, perhaps, at the very bottom of his child's heart, he was lonely." Gavroche comes in from the cold to varying levels of warmth. Mostly book-verse, but the reader may picture what they like.


**My second Les Mis story, and my second Gavroche one. I apologize for nothing. Enjoy!**

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He decided to pay a visit to his family. Perhaps it was the chill of the night, perhaps the fact that his stomach was empty, perhaps, at the very bottom of his child's heart, he was lonely.

Gavroche wasn't sure how well he would be received, but that was usual. He didn't bother knocking, but he made enough noise outside that the inhabitants of the house knew that he was coming before he entered the room.

This was not the first time he'd come, and the state of his family was much the same as it had been the last time. To Gavroche's secret relief, they had a small fire burning, and that was enough to draw the sorrowless yet cold boy into the place.

His father was tapping his fingers incessantly over a paper or two, muttering to himself. He didn't look up as Gavroche entered, and the child did not acknowledge him. Gavroche felt his mother's glare boring into him as he knelt by the fire, shivering with pleasure, and he shrugged off her plain unwelcome with an "Ah, that's good!"

Two older girls, his sisters, were dividing a stale crust of bread between them. They looked up, Eponine with a friendly raised eyebrow, Azelma with a faint smile which was all she dared, lest she anger their mother. Gavroche turned towards them, and Eponine broke her bit of crust in two. This would not have been noticed, had not Azelma seen her sister's action and copied, catching the eye of their mother. Without turning her head from her crude sewing, she snapped, "Don't feed the mongrel!"

Azelma lowered her gaze to her small hands, ashamed, while Eponine bit back a reply that would have earned her a sharper rebuke. However, her hand slipped into Gavroche's a minute later, passing him the small bit of food with a whispered, "Take it."

He would have devoured it on the spot, would it not have earned him an early release back into the cold, and Gavroche was determined to savor this meagre warmth as long as it lasted. Instead his meal disappeared into one of his many pockets. He gave his sister a small nod and the brief flash of a smile which meant "Merci."

Eponine was a good sister. Azelma was too afraid. She obeyed their parents in everything without a question, and their father ignored Gavroche and their mother despised him. Eponine found him on the streets some days, or he would find her, and they would exchange a few words, or Gavroche would show her around his home, so that soon she was able to find her way around the pathways of the city as well as her brother could.

Eponine had never called him little, or any of the vulgar names his mother used for him.

She spoke to him now, quietly, in the shade of her mother's frowns. "How have you been, Gavroche?"

Gavroche replied with normal volume, rubbing his hands together vigorously before the sputtering flames. "Much as ever." He didn't ask how she was doing because one look around the shabby room told him all he needed to know. The family was dreadfully poor, though they had more than Gavroche did.

"Did you come from anywhere?" By this, she was asking whether he'd been taken in by a kind person yet. Of course he hadn't been.

"From the streets."

She sighed.

"It truly ain't so bad-" He had to bite his lip to keep from speaking her name. The mother forbade it, and Gavroche wasn't ready to return to the night just yet.

"Best place for a brat such as that one," muttered the aforementioned woman. Eponine was wise enough to pretend she hadn't heard, but Gavroche turned his head.

"You are right, Mama, 'tis a better home for me than this could ever be."

With a snarl, the lioness rose. With a claw, she struck her cast-off son. "Do not call me mother! I am not your mother! They" - she gestured wildly to Eponine and Azelma, now frightened, "-are not your sisters! Out!"

Gavroche backed up. Most of his visits ended this way. The tears in his eyes came without any will of his, from her words more than her blow, but not a one fell, and his voice was strong as ever as he made his way to the door.

"I'll be going, then." Eponine stood up but said nothing as he met her eyes.

His father raised his eyes for half a second. "And where are you going?" He asked it every time, and Gavroche always gave the same answer, though he knew his father didn't care.

"Into the streets."

"Into the streets," spat his mother. "You walk in from the streets, you go out to the streets. What do you come here for?"

He felt her loveless fire, and suddenly Gavroche longed for the cold night to quench the burning. He spared a last glance at the girls, his sisters, and to his delight Azelma mouthed the words "Come again" behind their mother's back. He winked at her, she smiled a real smile, and before that hideous figure could further fume at him, Gavroche had pushed open the door, turned his back, and was gone.


End file.
